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National Park Service · Chickasaw National Recreation Area · OK

Buckhorn Campground Loop D

1Heads uppark alert
Park Closure
Vendome Well Parking Lot Closure October 5 - October 19, 2026. The Vendome parking lot and entrance road will be closed starting October 5th. Work includes removal of the asphalt, reestablishing the drainage slopes, widening the entrance road, protecting the historic stonework, paving the parking lot…
Alerts: National Park Service alerts API · Oct 16, 2026
First come, first servedNo reservation, and none to be had: all 48 sites go to whoever pulls in first.

This is how it should work.

Get directions
Right now
Nobody has saidNo season, no closure, no bookings to read
Sites
4848 of them walk-up
Drawn from the record · 930 ft · 26% tree cover · Lake of the Arbuckles within reach · Bortle 4 sky
930 ftElevation
492 ftWater · Lake of the Arbuckles
2.8 miS of Sulphur, OK
48Walk-up sites
26%Tree cover

The place

the agency’s own description · what’s there

In the agency’s own words

Buckhorn Campground has four loops. Loop D is open year round. Campsite on Loop D are first come, first served. Located next to Lake of the Arbuckles, Buckhorn Campground is also located near the Buckhorn Boat Launch and near the southern trailhead for the Rock Creek Multi-Use Trail.

Source: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

Facilities

Toilets
Flush Toilets - year round
Drinking water
Yes
Dump station
Yes
Boat ramp
Yes
Source: Stated in the agency description · Aug 23, 2026

Around the campground

On the water
Lake, Creek
Night sky · 65th darkest of 106 in OK
Bortle 4
Source: Stated in the agency description · Aug 23, 2026
Night sky: VIIRS Day/Night Band annual cloud-free composite, VNL V2 2024 (Earth Observation Group, Colorado School of Mines), read at the published coordinate · Sep 8, 2026
Official page →

Nothing to book, just show up

One of 1,623 federal campgrounds where the site still goes to whoever pulls in first. Get there before noon on a summer weekend.

recreation.gov publishes no availability for a campground you can’t reserve, so there’s no thirty-night reading to draw here. The season bar above is what the agency does publish.

BookingNo reservationsNothing to book, and no release date to wait forthe agency’s record
Runs itNational Park Servicethe agency’s record
Directions
Every line of the receipt · 3

What you actually pay

The sign priceNational Park Service
The National Park Service publishes no per-night rate for this campground that we can read, so there’s no sign price to print. That’s a gap in the record, not a free campground.
The booking feerecreation.gov
Nothing. This campground takes no bookings, so there’s no reservation fee to pay.
What a stay costs
The agency publishes no nightly rate for this campground, so there’s no total to show.
How we know this receipt · 4
Booking fee, change fee, cancellation fee, no-show: Rules and Reservation Policies, Recreation.gov, the published fee schedule, curated by hand into lib/reservation-fee-schedule.json (9 rows, each carrying its own verbatim sentence). The publisher states these policies were last updated September 2019. · Sep 9, 2026
The two totals: Derived by CAMPANAC by adding the agency’s own published nightly rate to recreation.gov’s own published reservation fee. Both components are cited above; the addition is ours and is shown only where every component is known. · Sep 9, 2026
Who keeps the booking fee: Recreation.gov facility policy text, Dead Swede Campground (facility 234221) · Not on the national policy page. This is agency policy text recreation.gov publishes on individual campground pages; this site holds it verbatim on 45 active campgrounds (campground_rules.cancellation_description, scripts/load-facility-rules.mjs). · Sep 9, 2026
The contract: Reservation Gods: Who Stole Our Campsites and Sold Them Back to Us, More Than Just Parks, April 2025 · Apr 1, 2025
Source: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

rules read Sep 7, 2026 · record Aug 23, 2026 · How we know all this

Seen something wrong here? Tell us.

Getting there

the map and the coordinate · the phone number
Coordinate34.43277, -96.99748
The agency’s pageOfficial page ↗

Where it is

Source: Recreation.gov data (RIDB), full extract · Aug 23, 2026

The weather

the thirty-year normal

Next four days, and the thirty-year normal

Typical weather

Typical October night 50°F, day 75°F.

Coldest month of the year: typical January night 28°F, below freezing. Bring a bag rated colder than that, and expect ice in the water bottle.

100°32°20°

Daily high and lowDays with 0.10 in or more

A normal is the 1991-2020 average for the month, not a forecast: about half of all Augusts are colder than the August line. The seven-day forecast above answers the other question.

Measured at: CHICKASAW NRA, OK (USC00341745), 5 miles away and 117 ft higher
Source: NOAA National Centers for Environmental Information, U.S. Climate Normals 1991-2020, monthly normals · Sep 8, 2026

The land, and who answers for it

who answers for it

Who answers for this land

Tom Cole, official portrait

Buckhorn Campground Loop D is in Oklahoma’s 4th congressional district. Its representative, Tom Cole (R), votes on the laws that decide what happens to this land. Public-lands grade so far: F. See every public-lands vote →

Seen something wrong here? Tell us.

Source: U.S. Census district boundaries and the MTJP Congressional Public Lands Score

How we know

every fact on this page, and where it came from
Right now: National Park Service publishes no season and no closure for this campground, and it takes no bookings we can read. That’s a gap in the record and not a locked gate: the number below is the only way to be sure.
Elevation: USGS 3DEP elevation point query at this campground’s coordinate · Sep 7, 2026
Night sky: VIIRS Day/Night Band annual cloud-free composite, VNL V2 2024 (Earth Observation Group, Colorado School of Mines), read at the published coordinate: 0.74 mcd/m² of artificial all-sky glow, ranked against the 106 rated federal campgrounds in Oklahoma · Sep 8, 2026
Sky-glow model: Duriscoe, Anderson, Luginbuhl and Baugh (2018), a simplified model of all-sky artificial sky glow derived from VIIRS Day/Night band data, the National Park Service sky-glow model
Cell signal: the Park Service’s own campground description, read as text by CAMPANAC. None of this is a measurement. It’s what the land manager published about the place, and phones, carriers and weather all disagree with each other; treat it as a warning, not a promise.
Nearest town: U.S. Census Bureau TIGER/Line 2024 places, measured by CAMPANAC to the town boundary; population is the ACS 2020-2024 5-year estimate · Sep 9, 2026